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Ongoing database monitoring and management is one of the most important jobs that the enterprise database professional has. Ongoing monitoring is essential to keeping your SQL Server system—and the systems working with it--operating efficiently. Regular monitoring can help you to avoid problems and possible downtime.

Here’s a look at some of the tools that can help you to monitor your SQL Server instances, as well as some of the monitoring tools available on the HPE Superdome X platform.

Windows Server and SQL Server Monitoring Tools

There are a number of tools that come with SQL Server that you can use to monitor your system’s daily activity. Some of the main tools include:

Microsoft Baseline Security Advisor (MSBA) – Running the MSBA regularly can help you identify possible system security exposures and weaknesses.

SQL Server Audit – Capable of tracking and logging events that occur in the database engine, SQL Server Audit can be essential for meeting compliance requirements.

Activity Monitor – Built in to SQL Server Management Studio, this tool gives you a real-time view of what is happening inside the SQL Server instance and the processes that are currently running.

Error Log Viewer – Regularly checking the SQL Server error log can help keep your system running well by tracking warning or error conditions that you may not have been aware of.

Agent Log Viewer – This tool enables you to track the success or failure of your SQL Agent jobs. Backups and database maintenance are often performed using SQL Agent jobs.

Of course, in addition to these tools, there are a number of third-party products that are available that can make the ongoing monitoring process easier by consolidating different functions into a single management point.

Superdome X Built-in Monitoring Tools

The HPE Superdome X also provides several key monitoring capabilities that enable you to proactively protect your server’s performance and availability.

First, all of the blades in the HPE Superdome X have HPE’s out-of-band Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) management, enabling you to both monitor and manage the blades. iLO provides a Web interface, and it can be used to power blades on and off as well as to check run-time conditions--down to details like power and thermal usage, and even fan health.

The HPE Onboard Administrator (OA) provides a single point from which you can perform basic management tasks for the Superdome X enclosure. OA has both a Web and CLI interface. It can perform thermal and power monitoring and management, as well as manage partitions. OA communicates with iLO to control the individual server blades.